Haiti. The Second.

Day 4:
The original plan of what we would be doing while down there was helping build the orphanage for amputees from the earthquake but the next part of the building process wasn't ready to go when we arrived so Rod and Debbie wrote out a list of other things they would like to get done.

And since we had a team full of people with different skills, as the list was read off everyone went to help in the area they had the most experience or the capability of doing.

Suffice to say I don't have much experience in anything. And my capability of setting up a chain link fence is pretty non existent. So I was stuck on paint duty.
Let's just get this out there. I HATE PAINTING.
The only thing I have ever really had to paint myself was my bedroom. And I handed that off to my brothers a quarter of the way through since I really didn't want to do it.

I had to keep myself going with the thought that I wasn't doing this as a fun time for me but I had gone down to Haiti to serve and this was the best way to do it.

After work that day some of went down to the river for a swim.
It was nice.
Especially since I hate the ocean and it's salt water-ness.

*Relaxing by the river*

The evenings were never a big thing. Just hanging out in the main room talking. Playing guitar and singing. Reading, listening to music, going to bed early.

The food! Was amazing. Like scrumdidlyumptious every time. But a lot of it was very..canadian. We went expecting things like bean and rice at every meal and instead we had Lasagna, Hamburgers, Pancakes and French Toast. I'm not complaining, though. I do like lasagna. Just a little upset we didn't have an spam-ghetti for breakfast like last time.
We had this one thing a couple times, it was a drink made out of plantains and a couple other things but it tasted like cinnamony porridge. Quite delish.

Day 5:
It was more of the same. Painting.
But apparently it took a lot out of me.
I went for a short nap after lunch and ended up sleeping for three hours.
More of the same. Eating, hanging out.

Day 6:
Well, as some of you might know there was a Hurricane heading for Haiti when we left Canada and the entire time we were monitoring which way it was going, how strong it was and all that, in the end it wasn't that big of a deal. Early Friday morning(around 1 am-ish) I am rudely awakened by a bunch of people talking outside the window of my room.
I went outside. And it was rainy and windy, but I didn't really see the thrill in that so I promptly went back to bed.
When everyone woke up later there was water EVERYWHERE. Great big pools of dirty rain water and some of them were actually pretty deep. A group of us went outside the compound to the main road to see the effects and for the first 5 minutes we were wading almost knee deep through the water. Quite the sight to see.

*Morning after the storm. A giant lake of water.*

Since we couldn't really do any work projects at the moment we stayed inside that morning and made up bags to distribute around the village. These bags typically contained some clothes, a pair of shoes, soap, a toothbrush if they were lucky, barley soup mix, rice, and either beans or a can of turkey meat.

There were different stations set up with each of the different items and there were people at each station putting the items into bags as the baggers went by.
At the end of the line there were people who tied the bags and then set them out of the porch where they got thrown from Rhonda to Danny to Curtis in the back of the bus.


*The confusing mess of making up distribution bags.*

There was an unfortunate accident.

Rhonda chucked a bag at Danny when he wasn't ready for it. He managed to look back at the bag just as it came and nailed him in the face. There happened to be a can of turkey in that bag. It made a gash in Danny's lip. He had to go to the hospital to get stitches.
Sick.

After lunch was probably my favorite part of the entire trip.

Each member of the team(minus Danny getting stitches and Josh who stayed at home cause he wasn't feeling well.) got partnered with a Haitian child from the school that is on the camp property. And then we took the bus full of bags and went out into the village and gave away bags to every home. Our Haitian partners showed us where to go and communicated with the families that we were giving the bags too.

My girl's name was Evenah. Or at least that's what I called her, haha, I was never totally sure that I was saying her name right.
We got along really well despite the language barrier.
I tried to make it fun by having races and playing hide and go seek.

*Evenah and I*

At the end of the day to thank our little helpers we gave a pair of new running shoes to each child.